The Life Cycle of a Plastic Bottle
Launch library · evergreen read
A plastic bottle begins as raw material, typically derived from oil or gas, refined into small plastic pellets called resin before being melted and moulded into its familiar shape at a manufacturing plant, often at a site far removed from where the bottle will eventually be filled, sold and used.
Once used, the bottle's path diverges sharply depending on what happens next. Placed correctly in recycling, it can be collected, sorted, cleaned, shredded and reprocessed into new pellets suitable for making new bottles or other plastic products, extending its usefulness well beyond its first life as packaging.
Placed in general waste instead, the same bottle typically ends up in landfill, where plastic breaks down extremely slowly, persisting for generations rather than years. The gap between these two outcomes for what looks like an identical bottle is entirely determined by a single sorting decision made at the point of disposal. Multiplied across an entire household's weekly waste, that single decision adds up to a meaningful difference over the course of a year.